Looking for a quick getaway?
Take a trip to the Islands this summer with these gorgeous and page-turning escape reads.
Island Romance:
Memorial Day weekend means that seasonal visitors have descended on the glamorous island of Nantucket. For year-round resident Darcy Cotterill, it means late-night stargazing and heading to the beach to meet her new summertime neighbors. But the last person she expects to see staying next door is her ex-husband along with his new wife and stepdaughter.
Darcy must also navigate the highs and lows of a new romantic relationship with local carpenter Nash Forester even as she becomes smitten with handsome vacationer Clive Rush, a musicologist in town to write a book and visit family. It all adds up to one memorable summer when flirtations flourish, family dramas play out, and scandalous secrets surface.
This romantic page-turner is propelled by the sixty-year secret that has shaped two families, four lovers, and one seaside resort community.
Set against dramatic Mediterranean Sea views and lush olive groves, The Rocks opens with a confrontation and a secret: What was the mysterious, catastrophic event that drove two honeymooners apart so suddenly and absolutely in 1948? And how did their history shape the Romeo and Juliet–like romance of their (unrelated) children decades later?
“[What] smart, sexy summer lit is invariably made of . . . has all the requisite romance and intrigue of good melodrama—and its settings are so postcard-gorgeous you can almost taste the sea spray and cold horchata—but there’s real wit and substance in his storytelling. Think of it as a beach read you’ll respect in the morning.” —Entertainment Weekly
Castellamare is an island far enough away from the mainland to be forgotten, but not far enough to escape from the world’s troubles. At the center of the island’s life is a café draped with bougainvillea called the House at the Edge of Night, where the community gathers to gossip and talk. Spanning nearly a century, through secrets and mysteries, trials and sacrifice, this beautiful and haunting novel follows the lives of the Esposito family and the other islanders who live and love on Castellamare.
“Banner’s four-generation saga is set on an island near Sicily, where myths of saints get served up with limoncello at the Esposito family’s bar. . . . Consider this dreamy summer read your passport.” —People
Trouble in Paradise:
Matthew King was once considered one of the most fortunate men in Hawaii. His ancestors were financially and culturally progressive–one even married a Hawaiian princess, making Matt a royal descendant and one of the state’s largest landowners.
Now his luck has changed. His two daughters are out of control. And, Matt’s charismatic, thrill-seeking, high-maintenance wife, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident.
As Matt gathers her friends and family to say their final goodbyes, a difficult situation made worse by the sudden discovery that there is one person who hasn’t been told: the man with whom Joanie had been having an affair, quite possibly the one man she ever truly loved.
Now in paperback, the electrifying novel–described as a “suspenseful, thoroughly delicious tale” by People Magazine–about marriage and deceit from bestselling author Delia Ephron that follows two couples on vacation in Siracusa, a town on the coast of Sicily, where the secrets they have hidden from each other are exposed and relationships are unraveled. Told in alternating points of view, the characters expose and stumble upon lies and infidelities past and present and delivers an unexpected final act that none will see coming.
“An Italian aria, a Greek tragedy and a modern American masterpiece . . . This is a story of two complicated marriages, one vulnerable child, and a trip to Italy that changes each of their lives forever. Secrets, lies, love raging, love dying, and the shame of unrealized potential are exposed in detail under the Sicilian sun.” —Adriana Trigiani, author of The Shoemaker’s Wife
Beach Cover Ups:
A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.
Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books occasionally dabbling in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.
Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets. But eventually Mercer learns far too much.
When a body is discovered near Steps Beach, Nantucket police detective Meredith Folger is called in to investigate. The timing couldn’t be worse: It’s the Fourth of July, and tourists are arriving in droves to celebrate on Nantucket’s beaches, so the police force is spread thin. On top of that Merry is planning her wedding to cranberry farmer Peter Mason, and her new boss, an ex-Chicago police chief with an aggressive management strategy, seems to be trying to force her to quit. Merry can’t conclude the Murphy investigation quickly enough for him.
As she grapples with a family of unreliable storytellers—some incapable of recalling the past, and others determined that it never be known—she suspects that the truth may be forever out of reach, trapped in the failing brain of a man whose whole life may have been a lie.
Blinded by the Light:
Island Life:
A masterwork of travel literature and of history: voyaging from Cuba to Jamaica, Puerto Rico to Trinidad, Haiti to Barbados, and islands in between, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of each society, its culture and politics, connecting this region’s common heritage to its fierce grip on the world’s imagination.
“A creative hybrid of travel writing and in-depth reportage.” —Colin Thubron, The New York Review of Books
“Joshua Jelly-Schapiro possesses both a humanist’s irrepressible empathy and a journalist’s necessary skepticism. He reports carefully, researches exhaustively, cares deeply, and writes beautifully.”—Dave Eggers, author of Heroes of the Frontier